Sleeprate Blog

How can Sleeprate’s self-Help solution could help now? Sleeprate’s modest contribution to help you navigate to safe shores

If professional help is unavailable, or if the problems are not severe, simple measures such as creating a regular daily routine, planning healthy meals, implementing some simple fitness exercises, practicing relaxation or meditation or yoga, can help.

Easier to say than do. There are self-help digital solutions out there. Mobile applications for healthy nutrition, fitness, relaxation, sleep, digital books, movie streaming… So many choices! Somethings should work for many, to ease the burden of the ongoing crisis.

Sleeprate provides a sleep solution with demonstrated efficacy in improving sleep. It is rooted in the gold-standard principles of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTI), and, importantly, it is personalized based on individual data and intelligent algorithms. Let us deep dive into how it works.

A first step is to find out what the problems are and what are their most probable root causes. It takes a week to complete this step and during this week you will be:

Asked to answer a few general questionnaires regarding your recent sleep and sleep-related issues, health and daily habits. This helps to get a basic understanding of what kind of issues you might have around sleep.

Asked to complete a digital and friendly sleep diary by answering a few evening questions, morning questions and some questions regarding your daily routines and feelings. This helps to understand the extent of the ongoing sleep problems, and of the possible root causes of the detected issues.

Able to add objectively measured sleep data to your digital diary. This option becomes available if you keep using your wearable device (e.g., Apple Watch, Garmin, Samsung, Fitbit…). This BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) approach allows Sleeprate to crunch the same raw data used to track activities, to provide an objective sleep tracking option. Based on movement and or heart-rate related data acquired with your wearable, Sleeprate calculates measures of sleep duration and structure/stages, efficiency and quality, as well as nighttime stress and recovery. This objectively measured sleep-related data can help with the solution, yet using a wearable is not mandatory.

Access valuable knowledge base on sleep. During this first week, while the algorithms acquire the basic information needed to evaluate your sleep problems and what should be done to solve those problems, you get access to a few short clips (1-2 minutes each) explaining the very basic facts about a very complicated, yet vital process, sleep. Watching those clips has a proven contribution to improving your sleep.

Get a summary of this first week in the program. At the end of these seven days, the algorithms provide you with a summary (and details) of your sleep-related issues in an Assessment Report you get within the app.

Your initial sleep improvement strategy is created.

2. This second part of the program includes a few additional 7-day cycles.

Sleeprate will guide you with what sleep routines you should change, and to create new routines that support better sleep.

Each week will deal with a specific wake-up, bedtime, or time in bed guidance. The changes suggested by the system aim at making you sleepy enough at bedtime. You need patience, since creating new routines requires training that sometimes is challenging and, at times perhaps, maybe counterintuitive. No worries, all guidance is accompanied by introductions and tutorials. Please read and watch those. This helps with understanding the challenge and with a commitment to complete it. This is the way to achieve better sleep. During the entire process, you continue to track your sleep using the app and its digital sleep diary. Sometimes, if the challenge completion is only partial, or if the sleep improvement did not reach the desired level, you may be asked to continue training with the same challenge. This part of the intervention is challenging. But no worries, you will get tools to help you keep going.

Each week you will be presented with a new tool that will help you with sleep. Such tools include relaxation and mindfulness techniques, guidance on practices that will help you reconnect your bed with good sleep, and more. The tools will be introduced once a week to provide you with the opportunity to learn about their usefulness, test their effectiveness for you, and practice. Once a tool is introduced, it stays in your toolbox for you to use during the sleep improvement program.

You will get notifications and reminders helping you to complete your tasks, take advantage of the sleep tools, and understand better the connection between your sleep-related habits, your sleep and your days.

Each week you will get a report regarding the previous week’s challenge, and when you complete the program, you get an end of program survey helping you and Sleeprate understand how effective the program has been for you.

3. Now you are free to enjoy the sleep tools and sleep monitoring for the rest of the year.

Sleeprate has helped many people sleep better, falling asleep faster, sleeping soundly at night, waking up refreshed, and getting more healthy days.

During these very difficult times, when we need good sleep more than ever, while sleep is challenged in so many ways, and access to regular care is limited, we at Sleeprate feel that it is our mission and duty to offer you a tool to support you get safely through the Corona caused crisis.